This is my first official plea for help as part of the project. I have a pdf copy of The Fessenden Family in America, and I have converted it into html format in Adobe. The problem is I don’t know how to contact the direct family members of Edwin Allan Fessenden (or his daughter, Mary Elizabeth Fessenden Washburn, who actually published the book) to get permission to make it available on the website. If someone in the family out there can get me in touch with the right people, we can make the book readily available. As soon as I get permission, I’ll put it on the project site here as both a PDF and html to make it easily accessible to the whole family.

Well, here we are. If you are here, you are either interested in this project, or you are just seeing how much of a nerd I am. I’m perfectly ok with either option.

Hopefully, if all goes according to plan, both this blog and the actual genealogy project will grow over the next few weeks, months, and years. My hope is that I will get some support on the project from as many Fessendens (or those married to Fessendens or descendants of Fessendens) to gather this data and fill the genealogy information and history of the family.

I realize I could have done this by going to one of the big names, but I have two reasons I took this route instead. First, I don’t want to pay for a subscription like that. For that same reason, I will never charge for basic access to this site/project. All of the information that is entered here is free for the use of all Fessendens (with the exception of the digital copy of The Fessenden Family in America that I hope to include if the current copyright holder requires some other arrangement). I do have a place that you can make a donation to keep the site running, but any money donated there will go solely to the actual cash expenditures of the project. Any donations over that will be given to the charity of your choice. My time (and that of anyone who participates) is being donated free of charge. If the site comes to a point in which I just cannot afford to run it (again, cash expenditures, not time), I will put out a request for funds or close it before we make it into a subscription service. Period. Second, I enjoy setting up websites, and I wanted to do one as a side project, so the idea just grew as time went on.

So, if you want to help (or just fill in your information), then contact me and we will get started.